Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

Diocles. On burning mirrors, 2. Netz. Greek mathematics, 215f., also
stresses the absence of stable mathematical schools, but overlooks evidence on Py-
thagoras’ and Eudoxus’ schools.
29
See above, 250f.
30
They stem, respectively, from Sotion and Hippobotus: Sotion.
Die Schule des Ari-
stoteles, Suppl. II, ed. by F. Wehrli, Basel 1978; Gigante, M. Frammenti di Ippoboto,
Omaggio a Piero Treves, Padua 1984, 151–193; Giannattasio Andria, R. I frammenti
delle “Successioni dei filosofi”, Naples 1989.
31
Staden, H. von. Rupture and continuity: Hellenistic reflections on the history of
medicine,
AHM, 143–187 (one of them, written by Apollonius Mys, included almost
thirty books).
32
Mudry, P.
La préface du De Medicina de Celse, Rome 1982; Staden, H. von. Celsus
as historian?,
AHM, 251–294.

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Chapter 8: Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
286
dence, absent. We know little about the secondary school in the Hellenistic
epoch, but the tradition of teaching courses in mathematics privately or, in
some cases, in public gymnasia as well, does not seem to have been extinct,
33
while these sciences themselves formed part of the pedagogical ideal of the
time, ëgkúklio~ paideía.
34
But higher education and, accordingly, the attitude
toward professional scientific research were usually imparted to young people
in rhetorical and philosophical schools. These schools seldom regarded mathe-
matics with Isocrates’ indulgence, let alone with Plato’s enthusiasm, and hardly
encouraged their students to work further in science. The decline of interest in
science becomes manifest in the Hellenistic philosophical milieu; I regard this
as one of the reasons why the history of science as a genre had a fate different
from that of doxography or biography.
The first histories of the exact sciences were written by a Peripatetic philos-
opher and addressed (primarily, at least) to his philosopher colleagues, rather
than scientists. Those who read and used these histories in the Imperial age
were, for the most part, philosophers as well. It follows that the reasons for the
lack of immediate successors to Eudemus are to be sought in the changes of
philosophical climate, which were indicative of still deeper processes in the
culture as a whole. The spectacular achievements of the Greek scientists of the
third and second centuries in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics,
geography, physiology, and anatomy do not seem to show that general interest
in science was on the decline, particularly when we take into account the ap-
pearance of popular scientific literature addressed to the educated public.
Nevertheless, in the leading philosophical schools of Hellenism, oriented to-
ward values extrinsic or even opposed to scientific knowledge, the positive at-
titude toward mathematics characteristic of the first-generation Academics and
Peripatetics was radically abandoned. Neither of these schools fully supported
the cognitive ideals of the classical period; their attitude toward mathematics
and astronomy was more or less indifferent, sceptical, and even hostile.
35
The
33
Nilsson, M.
Die hellenistische Schule, Munich 1955, 16, 52; Morgan, E. Literate
education in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, Cambridge 1998, 6 n.14, 33ff.; Cri-
biore, R.
Gymnastics of the mind: Greek education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,
Princeton 2001, 41f., 180f.
34
Marrou, H.-I.
A history of education in Antiquity, Madison, Wis. 1982; Kühnert, F.